1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and a method for compressing a printing medium.
2. Related Art
In the related art, an ink jet type of a printing apparatus is used which prints an image or the like on a printing medium by discharging liquid such as ink in droplet form from a discharging head having a nozzle toward a surface of the printing medium. It is desirable to process fluff just before printing so that reduction of printing quality by contact between the fluff and the discharging head with each other or attachment of a released fluff to the discharging head is prevented in advance, in a case where fabric of which the fluff is generated on a surface, or the like is used as the printing medium of the printing apparatus. A method for processing the fluff is disclosed in JP-A-2007-224436, for example, which is a method for thermally fusing a fluff layer by radiating a laser beam to the fluff layer.
A fluff processing described in JP-A-2007-224436 requires a laser irradiating device in order to irradiate fluff with a laser beam. However, providing the laser irradiating device on a printing apparatus is difficult due to increase in cost and safety issues of the apparatus. In addition, there is a problem that images are unclear by landing deviation of droplets being increased, in a case where printing is performed in a state a discharging head is raised with respect to a printing medium so that the fluff and the discharging head are not in contact with each other. Therefore, it is still difficult to provide the printing apparatus which forms images having excellent printing quality on the printing medium on which the fluff is generated.